Patent pending ‘super battery technology’, developed by BioSolar, Inc., in collaboration with UCSB, promises to double the storage capacity, prolong the life and bring down costs of Li-ion batteries.
BioSolar, Inc., one of the world’s lead developers of energy storage technologies and solar innovations, announced earlier this week that they are one step closer to shaking up the energy storage market as we know it. Together with a team from University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), they filed a patent application for what they call a ‘super battery technology‘, inspired by nature.
The new technology has one breakthrough component, which makes all the difference. Unlike conventional Li-ion batteries, which have a cathode that solely determines the energy storage capacity, the super battery‘s cathode is the first-of-its-kind, making full use of the storage capacity of the anode as well. It is extremely powerful, it has high capacity, and most importantly it is very cheap to make, promising a huge boost in energy storage potential for any conventional Li-ion technology.
The technology behind the cathode is inspired by nature, made of cheap conductive polymers and organic materials. The polymers allow fast redox reaction, which enables rapid charge-discharge of electrons. According to the makers, for electric vehicles, this means that a battery that integrates this technology can easily double the range of electric cars, reduce the price four times, cut down charging times and last longer. And as far as renewable energy sector goes, these batteries will be cost-effective enough to be easily put into mass market use.
The promise that this new technology holds is huge, and the guys behind it definitely seem like they mean business. There is no reason to doubt the success of the technology, especially considering the incredible name BioSolar has in the field of energy storage and solar innovations. What is more, the people, who are now being funded by BioSolar over at the UCSB to develop the super battery technology, are no other than professor Dr. Alan Heeger, the Nobel Prize holder for the discovery and development of conductive polymers, and Dr. David Vonlanthen, an expert in energy storage.
Good luck to the great team. Let’s hope soon they mark the next greatest milestone in the field of energy storage, which we have all been eagerly waiting for.
Image (c) BioSolar
All too often these batteries never make it to mass production and we are left with a sad dream of failure …jaded not to expect much from our huge expenditures for the research.
Battery research is similar to another serious analogy; cancer research, which has shown relatively little results for the efforts over decades; thousands die every year because the therapies don’t work and the research appears to be time wasted on a hit and miss approach.
Perhaps information sharing would help speed the process along; maybe the Government needs to coordinate the efforts. Some work is proceeding along these lines with the DOE’s JCESR project for batteries; but, it’s three years into the project without a promising progress report to date.
The current approach for research and introducing the results to common useage is way too damn slow.